


as the poets say

by iphigenias



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Era, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nix loves the summertime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as the poets say

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Madeline Miller's _The Song of Achilles:_ "He is half of my soul, as the poets say."
> 
> This work is based upon the characters from the HBO show, not the real soldiers, and no disrespect is meant to the latter.

Nix loves the summertime. Or, more accurately, he loves _Dick_ in the summertime. The way the sunlight turns his freckles into a burnished bronze; the way his pale skin reddens like a blush is cascading all the way down from his forehead to the divots of his hips; the sound of his laughter, clear as a bell, when he manages to splash Nix with the icy cold water they are both standing ankle-deep in.

Actually, who is he kidding--Nix loves Dick no matter the season, no matter the weather, no matter if the world was ending and the stars were fading from the sky and the earth ceased in its orbit. Nix knows he loves Dick the way he knows his own name; written over his heart, in neat, uniform cursive, where he can feel it every time it beats.

When he’s around Dick, his heart beats a lot.

They’re lying together on the bank of the stream that runs through the back of the Winters property. It’s a warm, Pennsylvanian summer, the kind of summer that makes Nix want to stop time forever and just stay here like flies trapped in amber; sluggish, slow-moving, side-by-side with Dick for eternity. He thinks it wouldn’t be so bad, hanging around. He’s not cut out for work on a farm, that’s for sure, but Dick prefers the quiet solitude of Lancaster to the crowds of New Jersey, and wherever Dick goes, Nix follows. It’s been like that ever since they met at Fort Benning in Georgia, ever since they were a couple of kids who had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Sometimes Nix regrets fighting in the war, because Normandy and Bastogne and even Berchtesgaden each tore away little pieces of his soul, which wasn’t even all that important to begin with, but Nix will never, _ever_ regret meeting Dick Winters. Sometimes that thought alone is enough to drive the nightmares away; enough to still his trembling hand as it inches towards the closest half-empty bottle of Vat 69.

Dick is Nix’s lifeline, his saviour, and his best friend rolled into one. It shouldn’t be all that surprising, then, that when Nix turns his head to the side as he’s lying beside Dick, lets his gaze catch upon those copper-coloured curls, the soft rise and fall of that pale bare chest, the sharp thrust of those razor-like collarbones reaching into the air like Currahee; as he drinks in the sight of his closest friend sprawled beneath the afternoon sun, eyes softly closed against the glare, that Nix feels the overwhelming and not-so-sudden urge to kiss him.

The idea has been brewing in the back of his mind for a while; if he’s being honest with himself, it has rested like a baby bird in the nest of his brain ever since the night before D-Day, when Nix had looked at Dick and told him that he thought the weather was clearing up, and Dick had laughed in answer.

Nix had shoved it far away, of course, because back then he was married and Dick hadn’t even looked twice at a woman yet, let alone a man. It resurfaced in Bastogne, when Nix had truly and terrifyingly thought for the first time during Easy’s European campaign that _this might be it_. He might die here in a snow-covered foxhole in Belgium, his limbs frostbitten or blown off by German shells or both, his lips cold and blue and heavy because they had never gotten a chance to kiss Dick Winters, never gotten a chance to even try.

But then Easy had made it out, and for the most part made it through the rest of the war, and now Nix could no longer use a near-death experience as an excuse to close the distance between him and Dick, so small and inconsequential a distance, and yet to Nix one that stretched out like the Pacific Ocean.  

Dick came home with Nix to New Jersey, and they’d settled into a routine. It was simple during those years to forget the struggle of war, the heat of it, the sense of urgency that came hand-in-hand with the never-ending drone of enemy artillery fire. It was easy to ignore the fluttering in his chest whenever Dick drew close enough to touch, which was often, because back in the States there was no need to close that distance, no excuse, nothing but a desire that Nix soon learned to lock away inside of his heart.

Then Dick had returned to Lancaster to be with his family, and Nix had gone along with him, and though they were the furthest from Bastogne than they would ever be, Nix began to feel the same push, the same _need_ that he had felt all those years ago as he huddled in the snow beside Dick, except this time he has no excuse.

No excuse for pushing himself up on his elbow, leaning over Dick and cataloguing every inch of skin and muscle and tissue and bone, letting his gaze flare with an intense kind of heat he hasn’t felt since before the war. No excuse, then, for waiting until Dick opens those impossibly pretty, pale green eyes, squinting against the sun, before leaning forward and over and down and pressing his lips against ones that he has stared at from afar for so long, too long.

There is nothing much more to the kiss than simply a kiss. Just a warm, dry press of lips, and a strange feeling of connection, as though a piece of Nix has peeled off and slipped itself beneath Dick’s skin, and vice versa. When they break apart, with the sun beating down on the both of them and casting Dick in a sort of golden light, Nix feels as though he has been stripped to the very bone. His skin and his heart and his soul are raw and ripe for the taking, and he is so very, very afraid that he has ruined everything.

Dick opens his eyes from where he had closed them again in surprise. His gaze is piercing, and warm, and familiar. He smiles.

“Took you long enough, Lew,” he says, and reaches one broad, burning hand to Nix’s neck, where his steady fingers curl themselves into the dark strands they find there and push Nix down until their lips meet once more.

Nix smiles into the kiss and lets his eyelids flutter closed, not needing to look at Dick because he already has him memorised, already has him tattooed across the planes of his back and etched deep into the calcium of his bones. Nix smiles into the kiss and feels the sun high above them, hot and blinding and a world away from Bastogne, and thinks that maybe he could get used to a Pennsylvanian summer--as long as Dick is right here beside him.


End file.
